August 2025
The Vibe
August seems to be my month of introspection. We're coming to the end of winter, but it definitely has not disappeared yet - although maybe I need to move on from my Western conception of the seasons to the local indigenous one.
This August has been wet and occasionally wild so there hasn't been a desire to get out and see or do things. Its a time of hibernation and being insular, as being inside is often the best thing to do. Being warm and dry has its appeal. And with that there's a lot more time spent inside my own head rather than being out in the world. From that perspective, it's been a busy time.
We've gone through the change plan for the new university, and while I still have a job, not a lot of the feedback that my colleagues and I provided was put into the new organisational structure. There's a lot that has been put off to a future date - ensuing that there will be further changes - creating a climate of discomfort and disruption, that is expected to just become the normal state. I've talked the idea of temporary permanence before where that what is supposed to be a temporary extends into the foreseeable future becoming the permanent space that we operate in.
The job is as secure as it can possibly be and while there's a lot more to come in of the next six months, I’m in a holding position role while we go through this merger. At at some point we have to return back to normal operations and new projects to work on as I'm not particularly happy doing the work that I'm assigned as it doesn’t play to my skillsets. There’s no sense of creativity or to use my ability to solve problems. It's not playing to my ability to work in complex spaces. A lot of that has to just do with the working environment that’s completely hierarchical and a top-down approach to change. There is of course the illusion of consultation throughout the process Despite the years of experience me and my colleagues can bring to the process, we've never been engaged or asked to bring that to the fore. We've tried to, knocked on the door, submitted and requested things, but nothing's changed - which is the main frustration of the job.
I went to CanvasCon this month which was your typical vendor conference. Which is hosted here in Adelaide. The final speaker was a kindergarten teacher who's become famous on TikTok and Instagram, Mr. Luke. He bought a specific energy to his talk which was light hearted but asked something a little deeper around the idea of joy in our work join. It reminded me very much of the Mari Kondo approach of asking “Does this spark joy?” in order to clear out your home. When I asked that about my job - when was the last time that I felt joy? - it feels like it was quite some time ago.
The reality is that it's often only in retrospect that the joy appears. More often than not, the artefact or the place inherits a sense of joy rather than process embodying it. The joy of the birth of a child is certainly not in the process, but in the materialisation of life. When I think about joy at work, it stems from working in spaces of conflict which don’t bring joy in and of themselves. Joy comes from the end result where resolution makes the hard work pay off, where the conflict resolves in a better situation than when you started. So it's interesting to try and think about how you might cultivate a sense of joy at work. Joy isn’t immediate, but the result of effort. Maybe joy is something to strive for, but perhaps it’s something we discover. Maybe happiness is something we can achieve at work instead?
I started to contrast that with the zeitgeist of the ‘Influencer’ and the growth of Instagram and TikTok lifestyle inspiration. This is what we tend to think ‘joy’ looks like, but it's all fake and performative.
I’ve also returned to the idea that was popular pre-pandemic of bullshit jobs as a way to rationalise what’s happening with AI and the hype around it. I’ve started to see this relationship between bullshit jobs and AI, and how these two things marry together perfectly. If we're honest about the capabilities of AI, then the jobs that will disappear will tend to be bullshit jobs. Let's think about the industrialised nature of media and public relations. We've reached a point where every business does a press release, and the press release goes straight into media circulation because none of these things are jobs that care is attached to. These are money-making exercises, these are business functions. They don't contribute positively to culture or participate in society - they are there to extract a set value. Bullshit AI performing bullshit jobs.
And then I relate this to my own career and ask – what is the value that I bring? Can I marry that with that idea of joy? And this is where I've wallowed through most of August. In this space of self-doubt, self-pity, of not feeling connected, not feeling engaged with what's going on, and in many aspects feeling like I'm going backwards.
In a conversation with my wife, we discussed how the cost-of-living crisis has eaten up all of our disposable income. We're in a significantly different financial position than we were just a year ago, when we were able to save and put money away quite generously. That said, our saving wasn't invested, we spent it on trips to see family, outings and socialising – and that's all had come to a stop. We've had to rein in significantly on what's possible. So all of a sudden, the hard work that you put into your job doesn't seem to be paying off. I'm not feeling better off or like I'm moving forward. At best, it's stationary, but it definitely feels more like we're going backwards.
So that's the vibe of August. It's wet, it's cold, it's depressing and I've been depressed.
At the same time, this is also the time of the year when the wattle starts to bloom. These golden flowers herald spring. It's coming. It's coming! The buds are starting to appear. There are blossoms on the row of trees leading down our driveway. We're still in for cold days ahead, and a few warm ones, as we move into this part of the year where the garden becomes overgrown in weeds. There's not much you can do about it. That's the natural state.
Events
I attended CanvasCon and also got most of the new team together for a lunch - always such a good time breaking bread with people. Had a friend come and visit from Victoria
Photos
Watched
A complete mishmash of viewing through the month. For example, a weekend with Werner Herzog's Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, followed by Adam Curtis' Shifty to KPop Demon Hunters. We had a family trip to the cinema to see the 41st anniversary screening of This Is Spinal Tap
Listened
I thoroughly recommend a couple of recent podcast seasons: [Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet](This Is Spinal Tap) and Expanse: Nowhere Man.
Read
I passed a bit of a milestone in August, finishing the final Discworld Novel. It was with a bit of grief getting to the end of the series – it's something I can recommend everyone should read, given Pratchett's genre-hopping style there is truly something for everyone.